1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to photographic developing devices, and more particularly to a borderless printing easel for minimizing paper loss during the production of one or more borderless prints from a single sheet of paper.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Existing printing easels suffer from the disadvantage that they are cumbersome to operate and are usually expensive to fabricate. More importantly, existing easels waste a substantial amount of paper because of their structure by producing prints on a single sheet of paper which are spaced apart from one another thereby reducing the number of prints which ideally could be fitted on a sheet of paper by spacing those prints closer together.
One such printing easel is described in Retzyl, U.S. Pat. No. 3,728,021. The Retzyl patent discloses a printing easel having various sized openings formed in a frame which is supported over a slidable paper holder; covers are adapted to separately open and close over the openings and a blocking means is provided for positioning the paper relative to the covered openings. The Retzyl device produces prints which are spaced apart resulting in the waste of a portion of the printing paper. The present invention reduces this paper waste and also eliminates the need for a blocking mechanism for positioning the printing paper underneath exposure openings. As an example of the savings achieved by the present invention, the present invention will produce eight 21/2 .times. 31/2 prints on a single sheet of 8 .times. 10 inch paper whereas the Retzyl device will produce only six 21/2 .times. 31/2 prints on the same 8 .times. 10 inch piece of paper.
Another printing easel is described in Krassopoulas, U.S. Pat. No. 3,230,823. Krassopoulos includes a rectangular frame having openings formed therein, and hinged doors adapted to separately open and close over the openings. This is similar to the Retzyl apparatus except that there is no means for adjusting the paper beneath the frame. Like Retzyl, the exposures produced are spaced apart on the print paper due to the necessity of maintaining a spaced relation with respect to the exposure openings. The result is wasted paper, a disadvantage which the present invention is designed to overcome.
The printing easel of the present invention is novel and unique in that it uses almost the entire sheet of an 8 .times. 10 inch sheet of printing paper, and does not require mechanisms for adjusting various apertures relative to the printing paper. Using this invention, a maximum number of prints of a given preselection of sizes can be rapidly and efficiently produced on a single sheet of print paper. The apparatus has the further advanatage of being adaptable to inexpensive mass production techniques, such as stamping of the mask plates, thereby reducing the equipment cost to the photographer.